In the cardiac tissue of infected STAT3 KO mice, a significantly increased number of CD3+ cells (14.48 ± 4.38 fold, P = 0.0003) was observed 10 days after CVB3 infection which was significantly reduced (P = 0.0379) to an 4.90 ± 1.03 fold increase (P = 0.0182) compared to untreated controls 28 days after infection. Here, STAT3 is linked to infection.